Say Cheese
by Unyielding Wish
Summary: "Why do you need my photo?" "I don't know, actually. Maybe it's just because I like seeing you smile." /oneshot


So far, Rin's day had been more or less terrible.

First, she woke up late because her alarm clock didn't ring. School started at 8:20, and it was already 8:10. Normally, at 7:50, the latest, her parents would come and wake her up. They were out of town this weekend. She lived with her older sister, who didn't really care about Rin. Her older sister always locked herself up in her room studying stem cells.

Rin's house was a mile from the school, and there was no way she could get there on time even if she sprinted. By the time she finished dressing and got her backpack ready, there were only three minutes left. She had to beg her older sister for a ride to school. When she arrived, she found out that she had left her ID card at home. That meant she wouldn't be able to enter the library. It was already 8:18 by this time, and she only had a minute to get to her first class.

Her first class went by. It was tolerable—math was not Rin's forte. Then she was supposed to go to Honors English, but confused Room 30 with Room 13, which was across from 30. Room 13 was her third period class, history.

After English class, she went to history. There was a substitute for her teacher. Normally, that would have been a good thing, but in this case the substitute was a sniffly old lady who had to blow her nose every two seconds. Rin didn't understand anything she said.

Fourth period was Speech and Communication. Rin forgot to bring her essay due that day, and so had to give a speech without anything she could refer to when she forgot what she was going to say next. Then lunch came—Rin did not have the time to pack a lunch. She sat through the entire period listening to her friends chatter about mundane people like Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.

Fifth period, gym, passed with Rin being utterly humiliated on the field. When she kicked the soccer ball, her shoe flew off along with the ball. Then she went to pick up her shoe and tripped on her own feet, landing on her nose.

Sixth period, science, was probably the only decent part of her day, because they had an experiment with an egg that would last a few days. That meant that there would not be much homework, just lab work. Still, there was a douchebag in her class who was incredibly annoying and thought Rin was inferior to him. He liked English and at the beginning of the year, bet that Rin couldn't get a higher grade than him in English. The idiot kind of ruined science for her.

Now school was finally over. Rin lugged her heavy backpack to the park and sat it down on a bench. Her sister would pick her up at six.

_Now for the stupid English homework…_ Rin pulled out a pencil from her backpack. As life would have it, the pencil was broken. Rin rummaged in her backpack for a mechanical pencil. She wrote her name and clicked for more lead, but when she began to write the answer to a question, the lead slipped back in. Rin shook the pencil. The lead fell out and disappeared in the grass, and she was left with a mechanical pencil with no lead.

_Always bring extra lead,_ Rin thought to herself as she pulled out a pen. Thankfully, there was still ink in it. She would just have to be careful not to make any mistakes.

The first question was, "In 'A Comforter' by Ambrose Bierce, what enrages William Bunker?"

Rin pulled her binder out of her backpack and flipped through it, trying to find a print of the story her English teacher had handed out that day. A wind whipped up and her homework, which was lying on the seat next to her, blew away.

"Hey! Not fair," Rin protested. She dropped her binder and chased after the stray piece of paper, flying high in the wind. Her hairband fell off. Rin bent down and grabbed it off of the ground. Her blonde hair flew in all directions; she secured her unruly hair by snapping the hairband back on.

By this time, her homework was nowhere to be seen.

Rin sank into the grass. She really needed that A in Honors English. Especially since she had to prove wrong that jerk in science class. Now that her homework was gone, she would get a zero for tomorrow in English. That would lower her grades down to a C, B-minus at best.

She took a deep breath, lips quivering. She was ready to throw a fit, or cry, or something. Stupid day. Why couldn't it go by sooner? Another blast of wind loosened up her hairband. Rin adjusted it and raked flyaway hair away from her eyes. She looked around the park, trying to find something to focus on, to calm down.

Her eyes landed on the bench. Her backpack and binder were still there.

_Oh, right._ Rin picked herself up, brushed off her pants, and trudged back to the bench. "At least I could read 'A Comforter' and ask Luna what the questions are," she said aloud to herself.

Rin sat down, put the binder on her lap, and frowned at the page in front of her. The text was in Times New Roman and tiny. There were two stories crammed on one page, one on the other, and her English teacher had made the font size very small; "to conserve paper," she said. Along with the story "A Comforter," there was also "The Gift of the Magi" by O. Henry and "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant.

Rin bit her nails and began reading. As she got to the part in "A Comforter" where William Bunker's wife mentioned a cottage, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

Rin blinked. She raised her head to see a teenage boy holding a camera.

He was somewhat short by normal standards—still taller than her, Rin would suppose, but on the shorter end of the scale. He looked about her age. The guy's smooth yellow hair was tied into a ponytail. He had eyes of a viridian hue and pale cheeks, the kind that flushed easily. They were bright pink right now. He wore a tan sweater with sleeves too long for his arms. Under that was a collared shirt and the head of a red tie—probably a school uniform. He held a Polaroid in his hands.

_Damn, but he's pretty._

Rin opened her mouth, but no words came out. She snapped it shut and waited for him to say something. He didn't.

"What are you doing?" Rin demanded roughly when she finally found her voice. At least, she hoped her voice was in a brusque manner. The words came out more like a symphony of hoarse squeaks. Her throat was dry from the surprise.

"Oh, uh, I need your permission," the boy said. His voice couldn't really be called masculine. It just sounded like a girl with a lower voice.

_Oh, wow, he's even prettier when he talks._

"What permission?"

He took a step back. _Am I scary to him?_ Rin wondered. "Well, for a picture," he finally said.

"A picture? Wait, what's your name anyway?"

"Len."

"Len," Rin repeated, breathing it through her nose. _Len._ It sounded fluty and soft. Quiet. _Pretty boy._ "That's a nice name."

"… Yeah." Len paused. "What's yours?"

"Rin." She hated how while Len's name sounded rather melodious, hers just fell from her mouth with a little clunk.

"Rin… that's not bad either."

"Yeah."

There was a silence. Rin tried to remember what they had been talking about earlier.

"So… Len, you wanted… a picture?"

"Oh," Len said quickly. "Yeah, I don't need it anymore. It was just a spur-of-the-moment question…"

"It's okay. But why do you need my photo?" _Pretty boy, pretty boy._

"Well, I have this project for English class, and since I like photography, I decided to take pictures of people. You were reading something in your binder and I thought you looked kind of…" Here he blushed again and didn't look at her in the eye. "You know, pretty. Well, not pretty—wait! Don't take that the wrong way, you _are_ pretty, everybody's pretty, but—I'm not trying to say it to make you feel better, you really are pretty, just…"

Rin smiled a little. Weird guy. But she kind of liked him.

Len cleared his throat. "Anyway, you looked deep in thought, so I wanted your permission to take a picture of you."

"Oh." Rin was quiet, and then she nodded. "Okay."

"Can you keep the position you were in earlier?"

"I'll just keep reading the stuff on my binder," Rin replied.

"That's good, too. Okay, let's start…"

Rin glanced back at the text, but she no longer felt like reading. She felt a little shy, doing this with him. _Oh no, I hope I'm not blushing. That would be terrible._ She read the lines, but they had no meaning to her.

"Relax," Len said. "Don't think about me."

"Okay." Rin bit her lip.

_Don't think about pretty boy. Concentrate…_

"A Comforter" was actually not bad. Rin enjoyed it. The fancy language pushed it even further. "_It is a cold, unlovely truth—a sad, heart-sickening fact—but it must be told…"_

There was a flash.

"You can stop now," Len said. Rin looked up. He was smiling. "That picture was nice. Look. And I'll send it to you—Oh, is there any social media website that, you know, I can contact you?"

"Email."

"Okay," Len said. "Let's exchange emails."

"I have a pen and paper." Rin ripped off a corner of a piece of binder paper and handed it to him along with the pen. She watched as he wrote his email address on it. "Um, Len… what school do you go to?"

"Crypton High."

Rin's eyebrows shot up. "You go to high school?"

"Yes. Everybody has that reaction when I tell them." Len chuckled a little and handed the paper back to her. "I'm a freshman. What about you?"

"Oh. I'm in middle school. Crypton Junior High."

"Eighth grade?"

"Seventh."

"Oh," said Len.

Rin snuck a glance at him, hoping he wouldn't feel differently toward her now that he knew she was so much younger than him.

"So… your email?" Len asked.

"Right." Rin ripped off another corner of her binder paper and jotted it down.

"Okay." Len pocketed the binder paper. "I'll send the picture to you. Thanks for being a model."

"You're welcome." Unable to bear the weirdness any longer, Rin shoved her binder and pen back into her heavy backpack. She zipped it up and glanced at her watch. 4:05. Not six. Maybe she'd walk home today; she needed the exercise. "Well, I need to go now. So bye."

"Bye," Len echoed.

Every muscle in Rin's body was tingling as she walked away from him. Her face was red. _Thank god he can't see me._

"Wait!" Len hollered.

"What?" Rin turned slowly around.

"You're Rin, right? Rin Kagamine?"

"You know me from somewhere?"

"No, but this paper says Rin Kagamine." Len hurried up to her, waving a paper at her.

Rin's eyes nearly popped out of her face. That was her English homework.

"I recognized the questions, because I had the same Honors English teacher as you." Len smiled again, handing the paper to her.

"Wow." Rin couldn't help but grin. She looked at him happily. "Thank you so much."

"You're welcome. Oh, and Rin?"

"Yeah?"

"You have a nice smile."

Rin's heart skipped a beat. "Thanks."

"You're welcome, again. Now I think you have to hurry along. Bye."

"Bye," Rin said, and turned away again. She walked a few more steps before she thought of something. "Bye, Len! See you in two years!"

Len laughed. "See you!"

Rin waved at him, running off. She wasn't sure what had taken over her, but she left the park with a giddy, happy feeling. A feeling of joy and excitement. Like she could run a thousand miles, and nobody could stop her.

* * *

**I'm back~ :D  
**

**Missed me? No?**

**Well, I hope you enjoyed your oneshot anyway. I do not own the cover or the fandom. Yeah, you know everything. I wrote this in 20-25 minutes, so that's why it's not that good... ewe  
**

**Well anyway... Read and review~**

**~Wishie**


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